Insomniac Joseph Stoiber, 29, was walking in his neighborhood when he couldn't sleep at 2:30 a.m. May 30, talking to his friend on the phone about baseball. Lakeland police Officer Tyler Anderson saw him in the community near Florida Southern College and stopped him. After asking Stoiber what he was doing, Anderson asked to pat him down. Stoiber said no. Seeing a bulge in Stoiber's pocket, Anderson began patting him down anyway. During the search, Stoiber, who had been chewing tobacco, spit the accumulated saliva on the grass or sidewalk. That's been against the law in Lakeland since 1944.

In 2011, the city of Philadelphia paid out $13 million to people alleging harm from police, largely to alleged victims of excessive use of force. Critics say that the city lacks meaningful oversight of police misconduct and, instead of trying to prevent it, treats payments due to the behavior like a cost of doing business. The city, however, doesn’t see a problem, contending that recession-weary Philadelphians and greedy lawyers are suing the city for a paycheck.

An investigation by the Portland Press Herald and Maine Sunday Telegram has found that a disturbingly high percentage of individuals shot by police suffer from mental health problems.

A state trooper has been arrested after allegedly taking jewelry from a person who died in a motorcycle crash in September. Trooper Aaron Huntsman, 43, an 18-year veteran of the state police, faces two counts of third-degree larceny. He is also charged with interfering with police and tampering with evidence. Huntsman's police powers have been suspended, according to a release from the state police, and an internal affairs investigation is underway.

Two police officers repeatedly pummeled a shirtless man in a Jewish youth center in Brooklyn after they roused him from sleeping and moved to arrest him, surveillance video released Sunday night shows. Cops showed up at the Aliya Institute on E. New York Ave. in Crown Heights on the evening of Oct. 8 after receiving a call about a fight between two men, a community source told the Daily News.

A former Barre City Police officer who allegedly stole a neighbor’s new television last year, and then tossed it into the Winooski River, was sentenced to imprisonment, according to a news release Thursday from the Vermont Office of the Attorney General.

Zak Winston a Montpelier resident, was convicted in May for felony unlawful trespass, misdemeanor unlawful mischief and misdemeanor resisting arrest.

After a contested sentencing hearing Thursday, Winston will serve a 60-day prison sentence.

Boston cop nearly kills a woman and faces no punishment

“He smelled like liquor. You could smell it right out of the car,” a witness said, according to local TV station WBZ-TV.

The police officer crashed his speeding Toyota Tundra into a young woman’s car in Hyde Park just before midnight on May 24, nearly killing her.

Thanks to the drug war, police have much more incentive to go after drug crimes than more heinous crimes.

He says he put his life on the line to stop a killer — and claims cops sat back and watched. But city lawyers are arguing that the police had no legal duty to protect Joseph Lozito, the Long Island dad stabbed seven times trying to subdue madman Maksim Gelman — a courtroom maneuver the subway hero calls “disgraceful.” A judge is currently deciding whether Lozito, who sued the city last year for failing to prevent the attack, will get his day in court.

The police and firefighters who remained on shore as Raymond Zack waded into San Francisco Bay on Memorial Day 2011 and succumbed to hypothermia were under no legal duty to help him, a judge ruled Monday.